Posted on January 25, 2011 by betsylerner
When I was an assistant in the sub-rights department at Simon and Schuster, a guy told me that the only reason to survive in publishing was so that you could eventually fuck over everyone who fucked you over. I knew I was in the right place. A lot of people ask me how I have the time to write with a full time job, teenager, cockapoo, etc. I usually say something glib like oh, well, I’m manic, la la, or I’m just compulsive, tra la. But really, I’m in it to fuck the world. I want revenge. I want the last laugh. I want the Oscar. Shit, I’ve got the speech. Thank you fuckers for throwing me out of NYU film school, thank you Professor Pulitzer Prize for making me feel like a piece of shit in your poetry workshop, thank you dad for pissing on my MFA, thank you dry cleaner for destroying my buttons. Thank you for Lithium. And Lamictal. And Tylenol PM. Thank you for the bicycle messenger and the supply closet. Thank you for no end of ideas, countries named after me, a statue whose gown gathers dirt and is stained with my tears. Thank you.
Filed under: The End of the World as We Know It, Writing | 77 Comments »
Posted on January 25, 2011 by betsylerner
When you take a writing workshop, you are not allowed to speak when your work is being critiqued. This is the first law of the workshop. The idea behind it is simple: you can’t listen if you’re yapping. I actually think the rule of silence protects you from making an ass out of yourself. It prevents you from saying things like: what I was trying to do, what I meant was, it actually happened that way, etc. The only reason to get feedback, as far as I can tell, is to see if you got on base. Did you smack one out there? Some people at the workshop are intent on showing off, some are out to get you out of jealousy, and some are as thick as root vegetables.
What’s the worst or meanest piece of feedback you’ve ever received? Mine was when an esteemed professor asked me I wanted to be the Fran Lebowitz of the poetry world. I know he meant it as an insult, but I sort of took it as a compliment.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 66 Comments »
Posted on January 23, 2011 by betsylerner
"miracle bra" -- indeed
Real time, not simulated. This is right now. I have a few hours to work on my script and what am I doing: checking blog stats, looking at other blogs, updating my events page, thinking about taking off my sneaker and doing surgery on my right pinkie toe, wondering if the new bra I bought at Victoria’s Secret will fit since I was too overheated in the store to try it on. I want to rifle through my in-box, but there lies madness. I also have a yen to clean out my files. Early onset PMS. I tell myself, I’m just warming up. Can’t sit down and start creating genius work. I think I’ll order those vacuum bags I need to get on-line. I will start at exactly 9:30, work until 12:30, have lunch, go the gym, go the laundromat and read a manuscript while I happily eat Mike-n-Ike’s from the dispenser with the little beaver etched into the metal plate that releases the candy. That beav and I go way back. Maybe I’ll start at 9:45. Not a minute later.
Anyone got any good stalling rituals or tactics?
Filed under: Writing | 61 Comments »
Posted on January 20, 2011 by betsylerner
Hi Besty,
I loved, loved, loved your book and am recommending it to my journalist’s group.
I am the ambivalent writer of whom you speak, and I’ve been a successful journalist for the last 15 years, always wanting to write memoir/creative non-fiction but not finishing my book projects. I wonder if I’m just addicted to having assignments and an editor whom I’m writing for. But then after reading your book, I just wonder if I’m not crazy enough. I wonder if my not dipping into my crazy anymore — tearing my hair out, complaining about my nervousness and insecurities and fear of failure and despair on not getting a book – is what’s keeping me from writing. I decided a while back that I don’t want to be that neurotic (and my boyfriend would not put up with it) but now I just wonder if I have to be less “practical” and let my crazies out in order to write again. Curious on your thoughts. (Name WIthheld)
Sister, you just might just be nuts. You have a successful writing career and a boyfriend. And you got your shit together. Please tell me you’re writing to AskBetsy in a very weak moment because as far as I can tell, you are doing great. You are a successful working writer. Sometimes when you are fighting a project, such as your memoir, it’s a blessing in disguise. I hate that expression but you know what I mean. It will come. Something will shift. Crazy is boring, I promise you. I’ve worked with my share of famously crazy writers over the years and in the end it is tedious, draining and completely predictable. Doing your work every day, now that’s exciting.
Where do you stand on the crazies?
Filed under: Uncategorized | 61 Comments »
Posted on January 19, 2011 by betsylerner
I thought about blogging for a year before I tried it. Every time I brought it up, my husband reminded me that it might not be a great idea given my ICP (impulse control problems). It’s been two years, one month and eight days and I’ve been as quiet as a kitten, as well behaved as a first grade girl in a plaid jumper. And I’m fuckin’ sick of it. I want to break it down. I want to drop it. Stomp it. Eat it. Fuck it. But I can’t. I mean: I can’t. Do you know what I’m talking about? Am I in the audience or am I on the screen? Are these my hands, folded, waiting for my carton of chocolate milk? I’m sorry, officer, I didn’t know it was a go fuck yourself zone. Pocket book. Pocket book. Sweet pocket book. Your parents are dead. Lower your standards. Raise high the roof beam. Our soup today is lobster bisque. Send it back. I can’t. I can’t. This is what I’m trying to tell you. Can a tiger change her spots? You made your bed, now lie to me. I want to pull rolls of paper through my body. I wrote you a letter in 1997. Did you sleep with the teacher? Did you eat grilled cheeses? Why can’t you really write?
Filed under: self-loathing | 61 Comments »
Posted on January 19, 2011 by betsylerner
Sometimes editing a book is a ratfuck. You keep chasing something through a maze that no longer leads anywhere. It’s a sand trap. The canary’s last song in a forsaken mine. And sometimes editing a book is like making love to an ordinary woman or doing algebra. No one ever tells you how slow it is, how 5-10 pages an hour is a clip. Like therapy or sex: are you even doing it right? What goes on behind closed doors? It’s about attention. It’s about asking every question. It’s about having a feel for the fabric. It requires an innate sense of structure, an eye for the telling detail, a finely tuned sense of syntax, tense, rhythm. I think being an editor is most like being a tailor. Take it in, move the button, hem the sleeve. How handsome you look in the mirror. How trim.
Editing: art or science?
Filed under: Editor | 43 Comments »
Posted on January 18, 2011 by betsylerner
Just got home from my event at McNally Jackson bookstore in Soho. A finer establishment you couldn’t hope for. On the way back, I polished off two mini Charleston Chews and two mini Peppermint Pattys. I ate one of the Pattys so fast that I nearly choked, although this did not stop me from stuffing one of the Chews in my face while I was choking. At which point, I started coughing so hard that my right arm fell off and I peed myself slightly.
Thanks to all my friends old and new, and to all the wonderful nutters who read the blog, who came out. Thank you so much. It was an okay night. I was nervous. I give talks all the time, but this was NYC and if you can make it there…I think I finally settled down by the Q&A and was somewhat funny. I always forget that I’m a person of letters and turn into Shecky Greene at these things. Nu?
You know what’s always really uncomfortable: the time you have to wait for the first person to break the ice and ask a question. No matter if I think I have the most brilliant question ever, I never ask it. This goes back to the time in ninth grade when a science teacher said, “There are no stupid questions…until now.” The other thing I’m never going do (again) is volunteer to part of a magic act. No fucking way. Not after what happened at the Century Club.
Sometimes people come up to me and tell me that my book helped them write their book. That didn’t happen tonight.
Filed under: Readings | 49 Comments »
Posted on January 14, 2011 by betsylerner
This Monday night, January 17, I’ll be at McNally Jackson Bookstore, 52 Prince Street at 7pm. I’ll be “in conversation”with Glenn Kurtz about what’s wrong with writers. There will be a Q&A, I’ll be hawking my book, and with any luck Hawaiian Punch. I was thinking if anyone in the New York area can come that we should have a secret handshake or signal. Or not. Hope you can make it. Betsy
p.s. rumor has it August is coming.
p.s.s. rumor has it I started the rumor.
Filed under: Fame! Celebrity! Riches!, Self-promotion | 27 Comments »
Posted on January 14, 2011 by betsylerner
When I was fifteen, I went to an arts camp and developed an enormous crush on a guy until we got into a huge fight about what was more important: the authenticity of the feeling in a poem or the craft. He was for feeling; I was for craft. Feelings shmeelings. Everyone has feelings. I count on artists and writers to put those feelings into exquisite form, whatever that form and style may take. I want an author to be in control so I don’t have to worry. Of course I want to moved. We all want to be swept away, dazzled and destroyed. But the only way to slay me is with great craft. A perfect adjective can move me more than a whole megillah. Bleeders need not apply. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in love with my feelings, I’m just saying they don’t equal good writing.
Am I saying that all writing is manipulation? Am I wrong?
Filed under: Writing | 47 Comments »
Posted on January 13, 2011 by betsylerner
I’m enough of an asshole to imagine that someday an intrepid graduate student will track me down in the Jewish Home for the Aged and want to see some of my client files. We’ll look through them together and I’ll tell unforgettable tales about publishing in the olden days. The student will marvel at the long editorial letters, the rejection letters, the christmas cards with pictures of the author’s three children in the Bahamas. Contracts, royalty statements, reviews and remainder notices will tell another tale. The ups and downs of a long publishing life.
I had to archive some older files today to make room for new clients. I hate throwing out a single piece of paper. I have almost thirty notebooks and nine shoe boxes filled with every letter I’ve ever received. What’s the real reason for saving this stuff if not some outsize hope that someone will want to read it some day, make something of it?
What literary souvenirs are your hoarding?
Filed under: Uncategorized | 56 Comments »
